Martin, had 'managed to charm Irving for the time being,' and an engagement followed.

Before Carlyle had drifted into Edinburgh he had, of course, heard of the fame of Francis Jeffrey. He heard him once speaking in the General Assembly 'on some poor cause.' Jeffrey's pleading seemed to Carlyle 'abundantly clear, full of liveliness, free flowing ingenuity.' 'My admiration,' he adds, 'went frankly with that of others, but I think it was hardly of very deep character.' When Carlyle was in the 'slough of despond,' he bethought him of Jeffrey, this time as editor of the Edinburgh Review. He resolved to try the 'great man' with an actual contribution. The subject was a condemnation of a new French book, in which a mechanical theory of gravitation was elaborately worked out by the author. He got 'a certain feeble but enquiring quasi-disciple' of his own to act as amanuensis, from whom he kept his ulterior purpose quite secret. Looking back through the dim vista of seven-and-forty years, this is what Carlyle says of that anxious time: 'Well do I remember those dreary evenings in Bristo Street; oh, what ghastly passages and dismal successive spasms of attempt at "literary enterprise"!... My "Review of Pictet" all fairly written out in George Dalgliesh's good clerk hand, I penned some brief polite Note to the great Editor, and walked off with the small Parcel one night to his address in George Street. I very well remember leaving it with his valet there, and disappearing in the night with various thoughts and doubts! My hopes had never risen high, or in fact risen at all; but for a fortnight or so they did not quite die out, and then it was in absolute zero; no answer, no return of MS., absolutely no notice taken, which was a form of catastrophe more complete than even I had anticipated! There rose in my head a pungent little Note which might be written to the great man, with neatly cutting considerations offered him from the small unknown ditto; but I wisely judged it was still more dignified to let the matter lie as it was, and take what I had got for my own benefit only. Nor did I ever mention it to almost anybody, least of all to Jeffrey in subsequent changed times, when at anyrate it was fallen extinct.'[4]

Carlyle's star was, however, in the ascendant, for in 1822 he became tutor to the two sons of a wealthy lady, Mrs Charles Buller, at a salary of £200 a year. It was through Irving that this appointment came. The young lads boarded with 'a good old Dr Fleming' in George Square, whither Carlyle went daily from his lodgings at [5]3 Moray Street, Pilrig Street. The Bullers finally returned to London, Carlyle staying at his father's little homestead of Mainhill to finish a translation of 'Wilhelm Meister.' He followed the Bullers to London, where he resigned the tutorship in the hope of getting some literary work.

Irving introduced him to the proprietor of the London Magazine, who offered Carlyle sixteen guineas a sheet for a series of 'Portraits of Men of Genius and Character.' The first was to be a life of Schiller, which appeared in that periodical in 1823-4. Mr Boyd, the Edinburgh publisher, accepted the translation of 'Wilhelm Meister.' 'Two years before,' wrote Carlyle in his Reminiscences, 'I had at length, after some repulsions, got into the heart of "Wilhelm Meister," and eagerly read it through; my sally out, after finishing, along the vacant streets of Edinburgh, (a windless, Scotch-misty Saturday night), is still vivid to me. "Grand, surely, harmoniously built together, far-seeing, wise, and true: when, for many years, or almost in my life before, have I read such a book?"' A short letter from Goethe in Weimar, in acknowledgment of a copy of his 'Wilhelm Meister,' was peculiarly gratifying to Carlyle.

Carlyle was not happy in London; dyspepsia and 'the noises' sorely troubled him. He was anxious to be gone. To the surprise of Irving—who was now settled in the metropolis—and everybody else, he resolutely decided to return to Annandale, where his father had leased for him a compact little farm at Hoddam Hill, three miles from Mainhill, and visible from the fields at the back of it. 'Perhaps it was the very day before my departure,' wrote Carlyle, 'at least it is the last I recollect of him [Irving], we were walking in the streets multifariously discoursing; a dim grey day, but dry and airy;—at the corner of Cockspur Street we paused for a moment, meeting Sir John Sinclair ("Statistical Account of Scotland" etc.), whom I had never seen before and never saw again. A lean old man, tall but stooping, in tartan cloak, face very wrinkly, nose blue, physiognomy vague and with distinction as one might have expected it to be. He spoke to Irving with benignant respect, whether to me at all I don't recollect.'

Carlyle shook the dust of London from off his feet, and by easy stages made his way northwards. Arrived at Ecclefechan, within two miles of his father's house, while the coach was changing horses, Carlyle noticed through the window his little sister Jean earnestly looking up for him. She, with Jenny, the youngest of the family, was at school in the village, and had come out daily to inspect the coach in hope of seeing him. 'Her bonny little blush and radiancy of look when I let down the window and suddenly disclosed myself,' wrote Carlyle in 1867, 'are still present to me.' On the 26th of May 1825, he established himself at Hoddam Hill, and set about 'German Romance.' His brother Alick managed the farm, and his mother, with one of the girls, was generally there to look after his comforts.

During the intervening years, Carlyle's intimacy with Miss Jane Welsh gradually increased, with occasional differences. She had promised to marry him if he could 'achieve independence.' Carlyle's idea was that after their marriage they should settle upon the farm of Craigenputtock, which had been in the possession of the Welsh family for generations, and devote himself to literary work. By and by Miss Welsh accepted his offer of marriage, but not until she had acquainted him of the Irving incident. The wedding took place on the 17th of October 1825, and the young couple took up housekeeping in a quiet cottage at Comely Bank, Edinburgh. Of his life at this period, the best description is given by Carlyle himself, in a letter to Mrs Basil Montague, dated Christmas Day 1826:—

'In spite of ill-health I reckon myself moderately happy here, much happier than men usually are, or than such a fool as I deserve to be. My good wife exceeds all my hopes, and is, in truth, I believe, among the best women that the world contains. The philosophy of the heart is far better than that of the understanding. She loves me with her whole soul, and this one sentiment has taught her much that I have long been vainly at the schools to learn.... On the whole, what I chiefly want is occupation; which, when the times grow better, or my own genius gets more alert and thorough-going, will not fail, I suppose, to present itself.... Some day—oh, that the day were here!—I shall surely speak out those things that are lying in me, and give me no sleep till they are spoken! Or else, if the Fates would be so kind as to shew me—that I had nothing to say! This, perhaps, is the real secret of it after all; a hard result, yet not intolerable, were it once clear and certain. Literature, it seems, is to be my